Our previous summers have included a mix of necessary childcare and warm weather family fun. In order to carve out some time for my work, we arranged for my boys to spend part of each week at the fabulous home daycare they had attended since they were 18 months old, and then we enjoyed a family membership to a swim club and many visits to local beaches and trips to see family on Cape Cod and in Maine. Now that my boys are six (almost seven this summer), they have outgrown the home daycare—but since I still work, some form of childcare is a necessity. My job as an online publisher and freelance designer allows me the luxury of flexible work hours, so I am in the market for a camp or childcare that will take us through the summer but does not require a five-day-a-week commitment. Not so easy, I have discovered.

I would like to share my research and insight, and I welcome your ideas on what to do with children during the summer in regards to childcare. (There will be lots more opportunities to trade tips on fun summer activities and family daytrips in other posts.)

Summer options for children include: go to summer camp; continue the year-round childcare/daycare they already have; hire a nanny, au pair or babysitter; join a swim club with a babysitter; spend time with grandparents; or swap childcare with friends. Let me know if I am forgetting anything.

Which one of these ideas or combination works best for your family will depend on your child’s personality, your work schedule, and your budget. Here is a list of helpful suggestions to make this process a bit easier:

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It comes with the territory of having more than one child in the house that there will be times they will not agree on something. My husband and I have learned ways to resolve these conflicts—on many occasions we exercise our right to make most house laws and use our veto power when we see fit. However once the boys were old enough to understand consequences (around three years old), we started introducing methods like a coin toss or voting with a show of hands to decide on things like who gets cuddle time, which book is read at bedtime, who picks the video, and who sits in the “special spot” on the couch.

With all the political campaigning going on around the country, now is a great opportunity to teach your kids about voting, or if nothing else, how to say the word vote if they are just learning to speak. Although my boys are now six, they are old enough to understand how some of the basic party issues like education and environment affect whom my husband and I will vote for in the primary on Tuesday, March 4, 2008.

You can help your toddler or preschooler understand how the process works by picking simple things to vote on at home, such as choosing whether to play outside or to read a book, by a simple show of hands (it’s helpful to have an odd number but not necessary). I remember when I was volunteering at my sons’ preschool one day, the teacher asked the class who wanted to hear another story and who wanted to play outside by having the children raise their hands to vote. Although some kids were disappointed by the outcomes, it was a valuable lesson in teaching the children how voting works in a large group, and learning how to behave appropriately when you don’t always get to do what you want.

I believe kids getting involved with voting at a young age will help minimize conflicts at home among siblings and teach them greater responsibility for their actions later on. I know it’s a cliché, but our children are the future—so by showing them how what we do now matters may be good for all of us. If possible, take your kids to vote on primary day—they’ll get a kick out of the machines, seeing your neighbors, watching you vote, and chances are they will get a sticker that says “I voted today.”

More about voting:

Read Duck for President by Doreen Cronin and illustrated by Betsy Lewin

Watch You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown, a 24-minute episode about Linus running for school president and what happens when he starts making outlandish promises.

Find out where to vote in Rhode Island by visiting the RI.gov website.

At Blue State Coffee, customers (even kids) can vote every day to support one of five causes. Read more about this unusual coffee shop.

Although we spend a lot of time in our house doing craft projects, building with Legos, reading books, putting on puppet shows, and playing soccer, I confess we have not banned Disney from entering our home…yet.

My son D has been a fan of Disney’s Lion King since he first saw the movie when he was 3. I would fast forward some scenes that in my opinion seemed a bit scary in typical Disney fashion—including the evil character (in this movie it was Simba’s evil Uncle Scar) who kills a parent (here it was Mufasa, Simba’s dad and Scar’s brother) early on in the movie, leaving the child to deal with grief and figure out what to do next. The message of good versus evil, being true to yourself and taking responsibility for your actions probably went over my 3-year-old son’s head. But he loved Simba, his friends, his parents, the songs and the humor. As he has gotten older these concepts have made for interesting dinner conversation.

My boys often acted out the movie and made their own costumes. After seeing the Broadway version of the Lion King on stage at PPAC in 2005, my son (and I) was even more mesmerized by this show, the music, and the costumes by Julie Taymor. Now that my son is six, he is a little less obsessed but still a fan of the story. And lions have become one of his favorite animals. Although we love our local Roger Williams Park Zoo, it doesn’t have lions. My son has recently expressed his desire to see a real male lion just like Simba and Mufasa.

After searching around, we finally found one. Christopher is a 405-pound male lion who lives at the Franklin Park Zoo. Until we get a chance to visit him in person, here he is.

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Franklin Park Zoo (located less than an hour from Providence)
One Franklin Park Road, Dorchester, MA
617-541-LION (5466)

Neighborhood: Armory, West Side of Providence

Kidoinfo: Where were you born?
MK: In the middle of Connecticut.

Kidoinfo: How long have you been in Rhode Island?
MK: We moved here 2 ½ years ago.

Kidoinfo: What is your current state of mind?
MK: Cloudy, With a Chance of Meatballs…

Kidoinfo: Who’s in your family?
MK: Our nuclear family consists of my husband, my 17-month-old son, our neurotic and wonderful dog, Aoife (pronounced EE-fa), and myself. We have a satellite family that includes far-flung friends and relatives that drop in on a regular basis.

Kidoinfo: What trait do you most admire about your family?
MK: Our silliness and our resilience.

Kidoinfo: What is your favorite thing to do?
MK: I love to draw, to write, to cook, to read. When I am with my son, we like to build, sing, and take long walks. When I am with my family, we like to dance. Our dog doesn’t like the dancing, though.

Kidoinfo: Where is your favorite place to hang out?
MK: We love to visit the Dexter Dog Park and playground, Seven Stars on Broadway or White Electric on Westminster, the library (of course), the Gladys Potter Park on the East Side, and when summer rolls around, you’ll find us at the beach.

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By Michelle Riggen-Ransom

Snowshoeing is a great winter activity for getting outside and keeping active. More convenient (and cheaper!) than downhill skiing or snowboarding, and easier for little kids than cross-country skiing, snowshoeing is something the whole family can enjoy with just a little preparation and investment.

Last winter, my husband and I bought these nice “step-in” snowshoes from L.L. Bean, which means you can use pretty much any snow boot with them. Since we were only planning on being occasional users, we opted not to get poles (although I could see poles being handy for more hardcore enthusiasts). That meant that the snowshoes were the only equipment we needed before heading out into the great snowy wilderness, aside from the usual winter layers of clothing, hats, and gloves.

For my four-year-old son, we originally purchased a pair of Snow Paw children’s snowshoes. While my son loved the cute bear prints these shoes left behind on shorter trips (read: around the backyard and down the driveway), I found the straps difficult to adjust and rather flimsy. A longer hike down a snowy beach left me exhilarated, but my son fell a number of times and ended up facedown in a drift of snow sobbing about returning to the car. Not exactly what I pictured for our wintertime family fun.

I would definitely recommend choosing substance over style for kids’ snowshoes. For our next excursion, we upgraded to these Little Bear Spiderman snowshoes: they still looked cool but stayed on a lot better and felt much sturdier. My sister got the L.L. Bean Winter Walker snowshoes for her two-year-old, and both mom and babe have been happy with them. Each brand adjusts to fit up to 50 to 60 pounds, so the kids should be able to wear them for at least a few years.

The best thing about snowshoeing is that once you have the snowshoes, pretty much all you need is snow. Mother Nature’s been a bit fickle about that recently but when it does snow, you should head out as soon as possible. There’s something incredibly peaceful about walking atop fresh snow, feeling the winter sun on your face, and thinking maybe, just maybe, you heard the first robin tentatively calling out for spring.

Nature/Nurture, written by Michelle Riggen-Ransom, is an occasional column with ideas and information to help kids and their families engage with the natural world in fun, interesting ways. Share your thoughts and explorations by adding your comment below, or contact us with your story ideas.

Here is what I found recently while surfing the web…

• I read the Rag and Bone blog regularly—this week Jason introduced me to Jim Deneven and now I want to make beautiful patterns in the sand like this.
• MakeZine found this cool one-shot panorama camera, 360 gizmos, fun for kids (and adults) at the NYC Toy Fair.
• Find clever ways to display your kid’s collections in the last issue of Cookie.
• Read Parent Hacks on how you can still take your baby out in the snow without regular snow boots: Makeshift Ziploc bag “snow boots” for babies.
• Learn how to make your own finger-paint.
• The New York Times recently published a couple of interesting articles:
- How design conscious parents deal or don’t deal once kids join share their space—Parent Shock: Children Are Not Décor—Click on the comments to hear a variety of reader opinions.
- With the growing success of in vitro fertilization, the rate of triplets and higher-order multiples has steadily increased, doctors are now looking at Lowering Odds of Multiple Births.
• Nonchalantmom has moved down the street in Wakefield and is designing the fall nonchalant kid’s collection. Also thank you to Carina for introducing me to the lovely world of bloesem kids!

By Katy Killilea

The Capron Park Zoo is just a few exits outside Providence on 95 North, but it was a complete mystery to me. Luckily, I have a friend who goes everywhere and does everything, and she invited me to join her and two of her kids for a short daytrip to Attleboro, Massachusetts.

Most people I know have mixed feelings about zoos. Whether we feel bad for the animals in mock habitats or feel bad watching our fellow humans act like imbeciles as they try to get the animals’ attention, there can be plenty of anxiety. But Capron Park Zoo manages to create an atmosphere of calm.

According to the friend who was guiding me around, the sunny January day we visited was the busiest she had ever seen there. Maybe, but it was not at all crowded. The animals were enchanting: meerkats lined up on a rock, watching us, turning their little heads in unison this way and that; sleek otters doing backflips; lions looking just as majestic as a stereotype of a lion; all kinds of monkeys; a big, dozing sloth bear. The kids (ages two to almost five) loved it.

In addition, there is a very enticing playground with new equipment (a sign stated the equipment is suitable for kids up to age twelve), plenty of picnic tables and bathrooms (all clean), and periodically brightly colored placards, behind which your child can stand, to be photographed as a meerkat or bat. Our kids found this hilarious. Sometimes these old-fashioned pleasures strike the funny bone in just the right place.

Capron Park Zoo
201 County Street, Attleboro, MA 02703
phone: 508-222-6202
For directions, hours, and rates, visit www.capronparkzoo.com

If you have kids, then learning about schools—deciding which one is right for your children and your family, and getting them registered and ready—can be an involved process (and may even make you long for the diaper days). Our new contributor, Jill Davidson, will share her knowledge about schools (both local and national) along with her experience as a mom of three sons. Elias is a second grader at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Providence. His brother Leo will join him as a kindergartener at MLK in the fall, and their younger brother Henry will join them at school in a few years.

I recently had the parental version of the exam anxiety dream: I dreamed that I’d forgotten to enroll my son for kindergarten! I woke up, checked the Providence Public Schools kindergarten registration calendar, and realized with relief that I hadn’t. So you can avoid having similar nightmares, here’s some essential information about getting your elementary school age children enrolled in the Providence Public Schools.

Enrollment for Providence Public School kindergarten for the 2008-09 school year begins on Wednesday, February 27, and runs through Saturday, April 12. Grade 1 registration, for students who are new to the Providence Public School district, begins on Monday, March 3, and runs through Friday, March 28.

Are you ready? Yes? Probably? Not sure? Read on for the basics of what you need to know to get your children registered, and plan to spend time reviewing the registration information on the Providence Public Schools’ website.

First of all, to be eligible for kindergarten, your child must have been born on or before September 1, 2003, and your child must reside in Providence.
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By Maura Keating

Don’t put away the food processor and the ice cube trays yet. Jessica Seinfeld’s new book Deceptively Delicious is the answer to getting your kids to eat their veggies. The secret? Don’t tell your kids that they are eating their veggies. From brownies and pancakes to chicken nuggets and mozzarella sticks, Seinfeld manages to sneak vegetables into every kid’s favorite dish while making their parents feel OK about their nutrition and well-being.

The procedures outlined in the book will be simple for parents who already went through the stage of making their own baby food purees. The secret to sneaking veggies is to puree, then match vegetables that kids resist with flavors that kids like and that can mask the taste of the hidden nutritious stuff. For example, chocolaty brownies conceal spinach and carrots—I used the best quality chocolate that we had in the house with great results. The texture was a little off, but the taste was right on. A layer of blueberry in the Blueberry Oat Bars is mixed with spinach. My husband paired his bars with vanilla ice cream, even AFTER I told him the secret ingredient. When is the last time that you ate spinach with your ice cream? Carrots and broccoli lurk in a Spaghetti Pie with Meatballs. My pie was not as crunchy as the recipe and its corresponding picture suggested, but my son shoveled his dinner in with both hands anyway. Quesadillas are stuffed with butternut squash mixed with cheese, and pureed beans mixed with sour cream. This meal was everyone’s favorite. I don’t think I’ll ever make quesadillas without squash!

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On February 20, 2008 the total lunar eclipse can be seen in North America—the earth will pass between the sun and the moon causing the moon to darken while in the earth’s shadow.

If your kids stay up late enough to watch the event, the lunar eclipse is completely safe to view (unlike the solar eclipse)—no special glasses or telescopes needed. For detailed information about the times, locations, and how to view the event, check out NASA.gov.

Find out why the Moon is Red During a Total Lunar Eclipse and more fun facts at Lunar Eclipses for beginners. Great photo tips from NYIP.com.

See more moon ideas from Kidoinfo in Make it a Moon Week.